Queue the Broken Record

Kim almost got her slam after catching a nice trout, this beautiful redfish and then losing a snook that threw her Z-man Diezel Minnowz back at her!

I know I sound like a broken record skipping on the sentence “it’s still windy, but the fish don’t care” and it’s true… the fish don’t care! Two of the three trips I took this week were windy and we managed to have good fishing anyway.

Hiding from a hard westerly wind I concentrated on docks and rocks with the Sadow family of five. Mom, dad and three kids between the ages of eleven and fourteen joined me for some live shrimp under popping floats fishing. The action was brisk at first then slowly tapered off once a work crew rebuilding a neighboring dock started with the chainsaws and sledgehammers. I’m not complaining mind you, though I was sorry they showed up so early in the day!

A move to a rocky area was a good decision where we added several mangrove snappers and weakfish to our tally of spotted seatrout, ladyfish and of course hardhead catfish. This short three hour trip was the perfect duration for this family. Between getting up early enough to meet me at seven o’clock and the constant action the group was petered-out!

Wednesday I scouted an area of the Indian River Lagoon I haven’t fished in about six months. My wife, Kim actually asked to go fish this morning because the weather forecast was so good. I was happily surprised the forecast was accurate with winds so gentle at sunrise it barely rippled the water’s surface.

Not ten casts into the morning Kim’s rod bent over as she caught her first fish of the day; a slot trout. She received a few other light-bites in this area without another hookup so I moved the Banshee Extreme down the shoreline. Not much happened for a while except for seeing a few single reds and trout cruising around out of casting distance. Eventually we found the reds!

Two schools of a couple of dozen fish each were striking at tiny finger mullet tight to the bank with about a hundred yards between the schools. Once I got us into striking distance Kim made her cast and immediately hooked a redfish that crushed her Z-man Diezel Minnowz affixed to their Finesse Bullet Jighead.

A few minutes later she struck again, but this time she’s hooked into a snook and she’s thrilled with her possible slam, alas the linesider’s summersault resulted in a thrown hook. A phone call at this time resulted in us leaving these fish still biting so I could return the next morning with the clients that just booked a trip.

Strong winds at first light had moved the fish from where I hoped to find them. I sure hate saying “you should have been here yesterday” and I didn’t, though I felt like it!

Moving into the wind a few times finally paid off for us and my clients boated a decent trout and a small redfish along with too many catfish. The catfish were super aggressive this morning and if there were many reds or trout in the area they were not able to find the mullet chunks before the whiskered fish could.

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Capt. Mark’s passion for inshore saltwater fishing began while living in Stuart, Florida at the southern reaches of the Indian River Lagoon. Here he learned the fine art of snook fishing from the area’s lighted bridges while fishing at night. Here too he learned how to catch trout by the hundreds on the expansive flats from Jensen Beach to Ft. Pier